starting to count down the days before the wedding. easy week at work? … please. juggling like a circus act. wanted to clear out some of the backlog from the trip tina and I took to pittsburgh over memorial day weekend, and realized all over again what a fantastic place the burgh is. (more…)

packing and loading up … can’t wait to unleash the two little sig-monsters out in the wild and see how they do on the 5D II and tina’s T2i. realized that my little tamrac backpack wasn’t going to cut it this time around, and so the inevitable has happened: I’ve upgraded my luggage. (more…)

… and more than a little bit of worrying. not about the wedding, mind you. I have no doubt that’s going to go off without a hitch (not sure if Tina shares that sentiment). I’m worried about how the office is going to fare with the both of us gone for a week and a half. all that aside, I am really excited for the big weekend and then the trip to Yellowstone with tina’s family afterwards. (more…)

the good life — it feel like … Cumberland? Uniontown? just because it’s puzzling doesn’t mean it isn’t amazing. today’s post is going to be easy on the writing and heavy on the drooling. just one of those days, I guess. (more…)

tina and I took off on saturday morning in opposite directions but for the same reason: the bachelor[ette] party. given the fact that Randy was responsible for planning mine, and Rachel was responsible for planning hers, you may begin to suspect that the two parties would veer in very different directions.

video by brandon bloch, an awesome local photographer/videographer that is also the maker of this ping pong dim sum ad. the ad is good enough to make we want to try the place even though I had zero interest in doing so before (I love comet ping pong already, and there are only so many restaurants a city can/should have with the word “ping pong” in their names).

I think the funniest thing about this video is that the quality from the Barbie Video Girl is actually pretty good. you don’t have to post-process it to get your favorite hipster photography cross-process effect, and having the mystery hand in every frame of your special memories is just shy of awesome. (more…)

you can call me a geek, or dork, or maggot, or, worst of all, a noob (aka newb, nOOb, nub, whatever). it’s all been done before, and besides, it’s all true. none of that matters, because the awesome joy that is playing Starcraft II is well worth some name calling for the right to duke it out mano-a-alieno on the new battlenet. (more…)

been trying to get into some semblance of shape before I get the tux tailored for the wedding. when I work out, this is what I think about: eating at red hot & blue over the july 4th holiday down in williamsburg. it’s a chain restaurant, but like le pain quotidien, it’s one of those quality chains that could really fob itself off as a stand-alone restaurant. we’ve got one right up here in gaithersburg, md, but I’m disappointed to tell you it’s not as good as the one in williamsburg, va.

which of course begs the question, does barbeque really get better as you go further south? probably. north carolina, just wait, I’m coming. (more…)

one of the best things about going to a full-frame is that all of your standard zoom lenses start at 24mm on the wide end, instead of 27mm equivalent on the APS-C sensor. is it a big difference? you betcha. you may never notice until you’re in a small room how much of a difference those 3 millis of focal length matter. but what happens when 24mm doesn’t cut it? you have to step into the land of the uwa. (more…)